Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

Original Release: Playstation Portable, 2007. Version Reviewed: Playstation Portable, 2008.


THE PLOT:

SOLDIER Second Class Zack Fair dreams of being a hero. Working for the Shinra Power Company under the supervision of his mentor, the meticulously honorable Angeal, Zack's goal is simply to help. It's never occurred to him that he might be fighting on the wrong side. After all, Shinra brings cheap, efficient power to the world. How could that possibly be bad?

Angeal disappears following a strike on Wutai, a village that has resisted Shinra. When the company declares Angeal a rogue agent, Zack can't believe it... until he finds his mentor amidst the ruins of his home village. Zack learns that Angeal and Genesis were both part of the top-secret "Project G." Their DNA was altered during experimentation. Genesis is now degrading, and he will do anything to stop that degradation - even if it means going to war with Shinra!

Zack is assigned to kill both ex-operatives, working under the supervision of the heroic SOLDIER First Class, Sephiroth. Despite their orders, Sephiroth prefers to find a way to bring his old friends in alive.

But as their mission moves from Midgard, to the abandoned reactor at Modeoheim, to the rural village of Nibelheim, it gradually becomes clear that Angeal and Genesis were not the only ones Shinra experimented on - and that Zack might soon be facing these powerful adversaries alone!

Zack Fair: He just wants to be a hero...

CHARACTERS:

Zack Fair: Zack had a minor but critical supporting role in Final Fantasy VII. He's promoted to lead here, and fortunately his characterization is the game's single best feature. Zack is basically the anti-Cloud. He's friendly, bordering on boisterous, and is almost instantly likeable. He becomes disillusioned with both SOLDIER and Shinra as the story goes on. Still, he doesn't allow himself to become bitter, focusing on doing something good even as it becomes clear that his employers no longer share those values (if they ever did).

Genesis: If Zack is the best-realized character in the game, then Genesis is the worst. I know I still have quite a few titles to get through; but in a single game, Genesis puts himself in the running for Worst Character in the Franchise. He's meant to be a tragic figure, except... Well, he's so utterly insufferable! Most of his dialogue consists of bad poetry, with him obsessively grafting his own life onto the text of the epic, Loveless. His actions are motivated by his desire to save himself from his degradation - but "save my own skin" stops being sympathetic when you engage in wholesale slaughter to do it. Oh, and that degradation? A flashback reveals that it's the result of his own ego, when jealousy led him to challenge Sephiroth to a not-so-friendly duel.

Sephiroth: Portrayed as basically pretty decent, at least at the start. Despite the order to hunt down and kill his close friends, he is determined to bring them in alive if possible. He works well with Zack, prodding the junior agent to do his best work, and is also friendlier than he has to be to a certain young Shinra security man. This would make his inevitable descent much more effective... If that descent was actually expanded on, rather than happening just as quickly as it did in the flashback in the original Final Fantasy VII. As backstory in that game, it worked well enough to impart the needed information; as current story in this game, it feels rushed and thinly motivated, with the only real addition being a quick poetry recital by Genesis.

Real-time combat is fluid and fun - when not disrupted by gimmicks.

GAMEPLAY:

"Activating combat mode."

Crisis Core replaces the series' usual semi-turn based, ATB-gauge driven encounters with real-time combat. This is largely fluid and well-implemented. The triangle button blocks; the X button hits; the shoulder buttons are used to switch from swords to spells to items. Using items in combat can feel hectic and cumbersome, simply because you have to shoulder button through two menus to find and use the correct item, but it's overall engaging and surprisingly intuitive. Except that...

"Modulating Phase." (roulette wheel spins)

Except that, on top of the real time combat, Square Enix added the "Digital Mind Wave" (DMW). This is a roulette-like phase that, depending on its results, can result in special attacks and level ups both for skills and for Zack in general. It is the only way to gain levels in this game, so it is essential. It is also incredibly aggravating in its execution, particularly because...

"Modulating Phase." ---> 'Lucky Stars' "You can do it, Zack!" "Yeah, I'm on fire now!"

Particularly because the player is given no control over its activation. You'll find Zack powering up healing abilities while at full health, or using Summons that you'd prefer to save for a boss battle on no-challenge, low-level grunts. Not to mention...

"Modulating Phase." ---> No Match."

Not to mention that the DMW constantly interrupts the flow of combat... Meaning that if you don't get a match and nothing happens, the fraction of a second it takes for you to go back to dodging an enemy or casting a healing spell could all too easily result in a "Game Over." Crisis Core's main story is overall quite easy; as such, I'm pretty sure I died to DMW interrupts more often than anything else.

Finally...

"Modulating Phase."

Finally, I became extremely tired of the computerized voice intoning these phrases. Really, very, extremely tired.

"Conflict Resolved."

Fallen angels: Angeal, Sephiroth, and Genesis.

THOUGHTS:

Crisis Core, developed for Sony's Playstation Portable, stands as a showcase for the handheld's capabilities... as well as its limitations. The game offers dynamic (if flawed) combat, a terrific soundtrack, a variety of reasonably detailed environments, and cutscenes that are both fully voiced and skillfully animated.

The trade-off for all this is that the environments themselves are small. Very small. Most environments, whether interior or exterior, whether made for exploration or dungeon crawling, are similarly structured: A main path that loops around to maximize the limited space, with a few side paths leading off from it. In the city of Midgar, there will be three or four people per map whom you can talk to, and then you reach the border and a new, adjacent environment loads. In a dungeon, you fight three to four random encounters before reaching the border of the map and loading a new environment.

At least the story is good... for a while. The narrative spans years as it moves from the end of the war with Wutai to the hunt for Genesis. Through Zack's eyes, we get a sense of Shinra's degradation across this time that parallels Genesis's own degradation. Professionals who seem both affable and committed to their work are replaced by people who seem sinister or even disturbed. Scientific projects are shelved in favor of sinister experiments. By the time the fateful Nibelheim mission occurs, Zack wonders aloud what point there is to any of this, a statement of weariness that's a sharp counter to his early enthusiasm.

There's also a nifty thread involving the iconic Buster Sword, which emerges as a legacy in its own right. At the start of the game, the sword belongs to Angeal, Zack's mentor. As the story progresses, Angeal passes the sword to Zack. At the same time, Zack meets Cloud and becomes, in effect, his mentor... and of course, we already know that the game will end with Zack passing the sword onto Cloud - passing the torch between prequel and main game. Save for an overinflated speech at the end, this is all generally well done.

It's just a shame about the third Act.

The poetry-spewing Genesis: Worst Final Fantasy villain?

As the action moves to Nibelheim, everything seems in place for a memorable closing. Genesis has been defeated; Shinra has degraded into an entity Zack either can't or doesn't want to recognize; and he's embarking with Sephiroth on the misson that was the key backstory to Final Fantasy VII. At this point, all the game has to do to end up a firm winner is just flesh out the Final Fantasy VII flashback into a detailed chain of events.

But it's here that it all goes wrong. After spending a bit of time in the Nibelheim outskirts fighting enemies and completing side quests, you reach those key events... And then skip right over them, seeing basically only what was previously portrayed in flashback. Except with Genesis returning for no good reason except to make sure that Sephiroth is no longer even the focus of his own breakdown.

This is followed by an entirely unnecessary Fourth Act in which Zack (once again) tracks down Genesis, to a final dungeon that turns into an extended Easter Egg hunt. No, really: To proceed, you need to find all of the chests holding stones needed to unlock a door, while pausing to read synopses of the Acts of Loveless from headstones. When you finally reach Genesis, he first spouts more Bad Poetry at us... and then reveals that his sub-Vogon Poetry is also his deadliest attack.  The final fight is the series' most ludicrously easy Final Boss Battle since Mystic Quest, basically just requiring whaling on him and healing up whenever Zack's health gets low.

It ends with a brief epilogue leading directly into Final Fantasy VII. By this point, however, my previous engagement with the story was gone. I simply couldn't make myself care as the last cutscene played out. There's a post-credits bit meant to recreate the opening of the main game in the context of what we've just played... but even this doesn't work, with Cloud's attitude in this scene a complete mismatch with his ambivalence at the start of Final Fantasy VII.

Feathers from a fallen angel.

OVERALL:

There is much to recommend in Crisis Core. Despite technical limitations resulting in small and repetitive maps, the first half is genuinely very good. Zack is a likeable hero, and the background portrayal of Shinra's decline creates an effective parallel with the main plot.

I would rate this game much higher had the final Act not so thoroughly shredded the goodwill built up early on.  I'd still consider it worth tracking down, at least if you own a PSP. Though it was never made available digitally, as of this writing physical copies remain very affordable. It isn't a terribly long game (less than 30 hours, unless you try to play all the "Missions"), and there's enough that's good to offset the bad.

But with the final Act turning into a tedious and misjudged slog, I ended up with a negative final impression - even though, if pressed, I enjoyed more of it than I didn't.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Alternate Version: Last Order - Final Fantasy VII (anime)
Followed by: Final Fantasy VII

Followed by: Final Fantasy VII Remake

Previous Main Series Game: Final Fantasy XII (not yet reviewed)
Next Main Series Game: Final Fantasy XIII (not yet reviewed)

Previous Release: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Ring of Fates (not yet reviewed)
Next Release: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift (not yet reviewed)

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